{"id":131821,"date":"2020-12-04T12:17:23","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T22:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=131821"},"modified":"2020-12-04T12:17:23","modified_gmt":"2020-12-04T22:17:23","slug":"faanunu-agritourism-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2020\/12\/04\/faanunu-agritourism-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Agritourism strategy can create sustainable Hawai\u2018i economy"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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Angela Faʻanunu<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now is an opportune time for tourism students to learn about the industry that has been largely shut down throughout Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> due to the global pandemic, according to a University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at Hilo<\/a> assistant professor.<\/p>\n

Angela Faʻanunu<\/span><\/strong> is no stranger to teaching innovative strategies to her classes on sustainable tourism and business. Faʻanunu<\/span> sees the disruption caused by COVID-19 as a potential time of reflection that will hopefully lead to more thorough planning strategies for Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>\u2019s economic and cultural future. Her collaborations with various federal, state and private agencies aim to increase agritourism on Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Island, an approach she believes will create more resilient and economically stable Pacific communities.<\/p>\n

Envisioning a sustainable tourist industry<\/h2>\n

In her courses, Faʻanunu<\/span> challenges students to reimagine the conventional mass tourism industry in favor of alternative, more regenerative models centered around agritourism and indigenous tourism, based on relationships of reciprocity between hosts and visitors.<\/p>\n

“COVID has created an awareness that perhaps the model we have for tourism isn\u2019t the best one for our small islands. Perhaps we need to find other ways of engaging with the visitor industry that build the resilience of our local communities, such as our local farmers,” she said. “To me, agritourism is a win-win situation but to develop this industry in Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>, we need to plan carefully. Allowing commercial activity on agricultural lands can be tricky so we need to ensure that they are protected and that we maintain the integrity and sense of place of our local communities while also enabling small farmers to succeed by being financially sustainable.”<\/p>\n

Practicing Pacific resilience<\/h2>\n
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The Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Farm Trails mobile app connects visitors and residents to agricultural activities.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Faʻanunu<\/span> offers integral expertise on agritourism as co-founder of Kaivao Farm in P\u0101hoehoe, just north of Hilo, which she said has a vision to cultivate Pacific resilience.<\/p>\n

In 2016, Kaivao Farm won $20,000 in seed money<\/a> as a first-place winner of the 2016 Mahiʻai<\/span> Match-Up Agricultural Business Plan Contest sponsored by Kamehameha Schools and the Pauahi Foundation. The farm, independently owned and operated by Faʻanunu<\/span> and her sister, Kalisi Mausio, subsequently received a grant from the U.S.<\/abbr> Department of Agriculture to develop the capacity of agritourism for Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> county. This led to the development of the Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Farm Trails<\/a> mobile app, an electronic platform that connects visitors and residents to agricultural activities such as farm tours, farmer\u2019s markets, agricultural festivals and events. “We really learned how important tourism is for small farms,” said Faʻanunu<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Cultivating new strategies during the pandemic<\/h2>\n

Previously, before the pandemic caused a total shift to online teaching, Faʻanunu<\/span> took her classes to visit local farms. Now curbed from farm visits during the COVID-19 era, she is turning toward international conferences and the potential to host overseas guest speakers.<\/p>\n

“Students can attend talks and conferences across the world,” she said.<\/p>\n

Faʻanunu<\/span>\u2019s seamless integration of regional and global lenses gives her students the well-rounded perspective she hopes will be adopted by current and future generations to plan for better preparedness in the future.<\/p>\n

“You can plan to plan or you can plan to act,” she said, noting that her goal is to inspire students with strategies that communities across the world are implementing to address shortcomings laid bare by the pandemic\u2019s repercussions. “Tourism is just one of these strategies, but tourism has become such a prevalent strategy that it has overpowered everything else. COVID has shown us that perhaps we need to figure out those other strategies to make us more resilient.”<\/p>\n

Read the full story at UH<\/abbr> Hilo Stories<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n

—By Emily Burkhart, a UH<\/abbr> Hilo English and Gender and Women\u2019s Studies student<\/em><\/p>\n

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Faʻanunu<\/span>‘s farm was awarded $20K<\/abbr> in seed money<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UH<\/abbr> Hilo professor Angela Faʻanunu<\/span> believes this approach will create more resilient and economically stable Pacific communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[222,1411,1416,598,73,74,14,907],"class_list":["post-131821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-agriculture","tag-covid-19","tag-covid-19-uh-helps","tag-faculty-recognition","tag-sustainability","tag-tourism","tag-uh-hilo","tag-uh-hilo-stories","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131821"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131832,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131821\/revisions\/131832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}